Gothikana: A Dark Academia Gothic Romance

by RuNyx .

  “This is personal, Deverell,” Ajax looked at the grim scene with his keen eye. “And the fire makes me wonder if it’s not connected to the burned female we found.”

  Vad stood still, just watching the fire take up the instrument he loved. Corvina slid her hand into his in silent support, not understanding why anyone would burn this in the ruins, not unless they had something against Vad or his grandfather.

  A scream from somewhere in the woods broke them all from their silent consideration, spurring them into action. All of it seemed to be happening so fast, a night that had been beautiful suddenly spiraling into one of horror with each passing minute.

  “Where did it come from?” Corvina ran towards the sound, her heart pounding both with the pace and with the anxiety.

  They stopped at a point in the woods, looking all around before Ajax groaned in frustration. “Let’s split up. We’ll cover more ground that way.”

  “I’m not leaving her,” Vad declared clearly, and Corvina appreciated that. She didn’t want to be left alone. But there was one of the girls, hopefully both of the girls, somewhere in the woods, and they could find them better if they did split up. Ajax was right.

  She touched Vad’s shoulder.

  “He’s right. Go check the tunnels,” she suggested. “You’re the only one who knows them. I can check around the lake. Ajax can see go see the shack.”

  Vad looked around, frustrated, reluctant.

  Ajax nodded, already taking off in a hurry. “Just yell if anything goes wrong.”

  Vad turned to her, giving her a hard kiss. “I don’t care if a bat frightens you. You fucking scream, got me?”

  “I will,” she promised. “Be careful.”

  He nodded, gave her another kiss, and ran in the other direction.

  Corvina jogged down to the lake, the woods flying by at her pace, and emerged into the clearing by the bridge. Under the pale moonlight, the water shimmered, a reflection of the moon bright on its surface.

  Corvina ran up the bridge, breathing hard, and turned in a circle, looking to see anything untoward. All she saw was a lake placid and dark, and woods eerie and silent. Too silent, even the nocturnal creatures weren’t making sounds at the moment.

  Corvina shook off a shiver and stilled herself, trying to see anything.

  Something light drifted on the surface of the dark water, shimmering just like in her dream. Corvina gripped the edge of the railing, identifying Roy’s hair in the water.

  “Vad!” she screamed as loudly as she could. “Ajax! Down here!”

  “Corvina?” she heard Ajax’s shout from far away, possibly from the shack.

  “By the lake!” she shouted back, her heart sinking as she saw Roy begin to drift down.

  Corvina looked down at the water, the dark, reflective water. She wasn’t the best of swimmers, but she just had to go in long enough to keep Roy afloat while Ajax got there.

  The legend of the lake came to her and she shuddered.

  Fuck.

  Do it. Do it. She will die if you don’t, Corvina.

  Corvina nodded to herself, took a deep breath, and jumped over the railing.

  The cold water engulfed her whole, her vision completely lost under it, no light infiltrating underneath. Flapping her arms, she somehow managed to break the surface, gasping as she gulped down air, letting her eyes settle for a moment.

  The light hair floated away, and Corvina began to swim towards it, hoping to reach Roy before she drowned, hoping she was still alive.

  She heard a splash from the side and saw Ajax jumping into the lake, swimming in hard strokes towards them. Emboldened by his presence, Corvina finally reached the girl, gripping her around the waist in the murky water, and brought her head out, holding her out of the water until Ajax reached them, her arms going numb with the heavy weight she was holding up while her legs began to get tired trying to keep them both afloat.

  Ajax thankfully got there in a few minutes, taking Roy’s weight and dragging her out and Corvina began to follow.

  And something moved in the water.

  Corvina stilled, panicking, her heart beating a million beats as she took a deep breath, needing to get out, her dream coming to the forefront of her mind.

  Something slid against her leg.

  Just a fish, she muttered to herself. It’s just a fish. Get the hell out.

  Adrenaline surging through her veins, she somehow started swimming harder, trying to outrun whatever was in the lake with her, her chest heaving with the exercise, her body exhausted but somehow barely hanging on.

  She reached the edge of the lake just as something slid across her feet again, and got out of the water, cold, shivering, trying to grapple with the fact that she had just jumped in the dark lake and made it out.

  Ajax was trying to give Roy mouth-to-mouth while alternating with chest compressions, going tirelessly. “C’mon!”

  She didn’t respond, not until Corvina counted his twenty-third attempt. That’s when black water came out of her lungs, her chest heaving hard even as she remained unconscious.

  “We need to take her back,” Ajax said, picking up the girl. “Run to the castle,” he told Corvina. “Get some fire and blankets and dry clothes going. Get the doctor from the medical room in the Main Hall. Go!”

  Spurred into action, she ran as fast as her body would allow to the castle, emerging into the clearing where some students huddled together waiting for any kind of news.

  She told Kaylin what had happened, changed into borrowed pair of clothes from the hall, and began to get everything ready, waiting for them to come out.

  Minutes passed.

  Some groups of searching parties returned to the clearing with nothing to report. Some students left to go back to their rooms. Some stayed right where they were, worried about legend becoming real on the grounds of the castle.

  Vad didn’t return even after what felt like hours, and a flutter of anxiety began to vibrate in her belly. He had to be searching in the tunnels, the tunnels only he knew about. She didn’t even know how many there were, much less where. It would obviously take time. There was nothing to worry about, not yet.

  She kept trying to rationalize it, gripping her arms and rocking on her heels, hoping he came out of the woods soon.

  Some movement from the front of the woods had her stepping forward, as finally, Ajax burst out of the thicket with Roy in his arms, his body shaking.

  “Hurry, get me a blanket!” he yelled, and she noticed he was drenched from head to toe, his teeth chattering slightly as he ran with the bundle in his arms, taking her straight inside the Main Hall.

  Some people ran away to bring blankets, and Corvina sprinted after Ajax, finally able to see Roy still unconscious in his hold. Kaylin had ordered the staff in the Main Hall to quickly build a fire which was thankfully going. Ajax put Roy down and changed into warm clothes while someone cut Roy’s dress and covered her with blankets.

  “What happened?” Kaylin asked, ushering people out of the hall. Corvina took a hold of Roy’s icy feet and began to rub them to get the circulation going, waiting for his answer.

  “I have no fucking idea,” Ajax said gruffly, his teeth chattering. “I searched around the shack and found nothing. And then I heard you shout. She was lit up like a fucking beacon in all that dark water. No idea how she even got in.”

  Corvina looked at Roy’s golden hair. “I was at the bridge and she was already there.”

  Ajax looked up at her. “I saw you jumping in.”

  Corvina shuddered, remembering the dark water, not understanding any of it.

  The fire crackled, finally warming the room. Ajax sat still, looking into the flames. “I went into the fucking water to get her out, and I don’t know if it’s Deverell’s fable or fucking fish, but I felt things… moving around me in that water. Nothing touched me, but something moved. For a moment, I thought we wouldn’t get out.”

  Exactly how she had felt, even though she didn’t voice it.

>   She didn’t know what was in the water, but something was.

  Roy began to mumble, moving her head restlessly, before slowly opening her eyes.

  Corvina let go of her feet, sitting back on her knees on the floor as Ajax looked to her. “Hey, hey, you’re okay.”

  Roy blinked, dazed. “Where am I? Fuck, my head hurts,” she groaned, gripping her forehead.

  “Yeah, almost drowning would do that to you,” Ajax nodded. “Why did you go in the woods?”

  Roy began to sit up, and Corvina helped her, adjusting the blankets around her for modesty. “I-I don’t remember.”

  “What do you remember?” Ajax asked, his tone one of an investigator.

  Roy looked around, leaning against Corvina in her weakened state. “I remember dancing. Going out to get some air. And then nothing. It’s all a blank.”

  “You have no idea how you got in the lake?”

  Roy looked panicked. “I was in the lake? I don’t like that lake. Shit, my head is pounding.”

  “She needs to rest in the medical room,” Dr. Larkin, the residing doctor on campus, interrupted from the door. “We have to keep her under observation for the night.”

  Ajax gave a weary nod. “You rest. I will have more questions for you tomorrow.”

  Corvina followed Ajax as he left the Main Hall, her eyes scanning the perimeter, finally taking a moment in what seemed like a rapidly devolving night, everything happening so fast she could barely process it.

  “Vad hasn’t come back yet,” she gnawed at her lips, looking at the woods.

  Ajax frowned. “It’s been over two hours, Corvina. He should’ve been back.”

  “Maybe he got lost in the tunnels?” she knew how stupid it sounded even as she said it.

  “He knows this mountain better than anyone else,” Ajax shook his head, his face grim. “I… are you sure he’s the man you think he is, Corvina? Don’t you think it’s all too linked to him? Doesn’t it make you even a bit suspicious?”

  His questions hit her like little stabs, not enough to maim but enough to bleed.

  She looked down at the ring on her finger, considering for a long minute if he could have manipulated her so well. She couldn’t believe that. He was her anchor in this madness. If she doubted him, she would drown.

  “I trust him,” she told Ajax firmly, her eyes returning to the woods.

  “Then let’s give him another hour. Some of those tunnels are long.”

  Corvina took a deep breath, reassured by that, just as a ringing sound filled the air, one she hadn’t heard in this castle at all.

  A phone.

  Corvina watched as he took out one from his pocket.

  “Your phone works here?” she asked, surprised.

  “Special satellite,” he told her, pressing a button. “Squad members have these phones,” he put it to his ear. “Hunter.”

  He listened to whatever the person on the other end said for a minute, his body tensing. “Are you certain?”

  They must have said yes.

  His jaw worked as he cut the call, turning to Corvina in his investigator mode, one that weighed lead in her stomach.

  “They just identified the body we found in the shack,” Ajax told her, his eyes somber. “Five foot three female, died two years ago from blunt force trauma to the head, burned postmortem sometime in the last two months to make her harder to identify.”

  “Okay,” Corvina drawled, not understanding where this was going.

  “The dead woman is Jade Prescott.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Corvina

  Corvina stood, stunned.

  “That’s impossible,” she heard herself gasp, her hands going to her head.

  “She was in the system,” Ajax informed her as her mind spiraled, trying to make sense of what he was saying.

  Suddenly a thought chilled her to the bone. She hadn’t been the only one to see Jade, had she? The idea briefly ran through her mind before she shook it. No, others had seen her. They had talked to her. She remembered it vividly. But were her memories wrong? Had her mind truly warped itself to the point where she had hallucinated memories for herself? Had she been so starved for a friend that she’d imagined the bubbly white-haired girl?

  Corvina felt her heart pound, not knowing what was real and what wasn’t real at that point, her own narrative so unreliable she didn’t know what to think.

  “You saw Jade too, right? My roommate?” she asked Ajax desperately. “The girl with short white hair and green eyes?”

  To her great, great relief, he nodded. “Yeah. Which begs the question, if the real Jade Prescott is dead, has been dead for two years, who the fuck is that girl?”

  Corvina didn’t know.

  Who had she been living with every day for months? Who had she befriended and cared for? Who was the girl who had hugged her every day and lit up her life with her light?

  How could her instincts have gone so wrong? Was she wrong about Vad too?

  “I’m going to go and figure this out,” he ran a hand over his palm. “Come find me if your boyfriend isn’t back in an hour.”

  Corvina nodded, watching him go to the Admin Wing, and stood under the moonlight, confused beyond belief. Who was her roommate?

  A sound from her left had her turning.

  It was the caw of a crow from above her tower.

  And it was odd because crows couldn’t see well in the dark, so they always returned to their nest to sleep at night, foraging for food after dawn. So why the hell was there one flying around the tower and cawing?

  Her eyes drifted down to her window and she froze as a shadow moved inside her locked room.

  Was it Jade?

  Just as the thought crossed her mind, something slammed into her head from behind, and everything went dark.

  **

  ‘Wake up, Vivi,’ Mo’s voice and sandalwood scent were the first things in her consciousness.

  The first thing she saw after opening her eyes was the moon.

  As Corvina struggled to keep her eyes open through the fog in her brain, a pounding ache radiated from the back of her skull into her head. She took a second to realize she was lying on something concrete, somewhere high because the wind was forceful on her skin. Throat dry, mouth as though full of cotton, she tried to sit up.

  And failed.

  Panic swelled in her as she tried to move her arms again, feeling their leaden weight, and couldn’t move an inch, even though she couldn’t feel anything tying her down.

  What the hell was going on?

  Her eyes roamed around frantically, her chest heaving as she tried to make sense of everything.

  ‘Why make sense of anything?’ the voice she’d rarely heard before muttered insidiously.

  “I’m sorry it’s come to this, Cor,” Jade’s voice came from the side.

  Finding the strength somewhere deep inside her, Corvina turned her neck just enough to the side to be able to see her roommate, still in her fairy princess gown, smiling at her benevolently.

  “Who are you?” Corvina could barely whisper, some kind of force keeping her paralyzed even as her consciousness worked.

  Jade frowned. “You’re not supposed to be able to talk after this. Huh. The dose must’ve been lower than I thought.”

  What dose? What had she done? Who the fuck was she? Where were they?

  “You remember that tree by the ruins?” Jade sat down cross-legged on the floor by Corvina’s side, pushing her hair back with her fingers. “The tree with the eye?”

  Corvina remembered the tree and its odd eye.

  “My grandmother carved the eye on the trunk to recognize it,” Jade told her, smiling at her. “The tree was special. It only grew leaves once in a few years, and she realized that if you powdered the leaves, it gave you power.”

  What the hell was she talking about?

  “You could blow the powder in anyone’s face and control them,” Jade told her, sifting through her hair. “She called it the Devil’s Bre
ath. That’s what she used on their playthings.”

  Realization dawned upon her.

  The Slayers.

  This girl’s grandmother had been the so-called witch of the group of murders.

  “Your grandmother was-” Corvina swallowed to wet her throat.

  “A Slayer,” Jade grinned proudly. “Yes, she was. She was the one who brought the fun to the group. They thought she was a witch who did dark magic with the powder. Back then, they didn’t know it was a drug. She never told anyone.”

  Corvina felt some feeling return to her arms. “How?”

  “How do I know?” Jade asked, her green eyes twinkling. “That’s because she never died. She escaped that night, the only one to escape, and she was pregnant. She raised my mother here, and then they moved to town where she met my father. My father didn’t want her, so that’s when grandma told her about the Devil’s Breath. That’s the night she conceived me.”

  It was too much. The entire night up until that point was too much for her to wrap her head around.

  Corvina felt sick not just with the night but with the story, thinking about a man in a situation she was as a woman forced him. It was absolutely disgusting.

  Jade went on, as though happy to finally get it off her shoulders. She’d always loved talking. “Sadly, my father never remembered, and mother died a few years later. That’s when my grandma took me in. She raised me, taught me everything, told me all about what she and my grandfather used to do.”

  More strength returned to Corvina and she managed to turn slightly, staring up at the girl who had been her first friend in this new place, a girl she had trusted.

  “Oh don’t look at me like that,” Jade scoffed. “It was so well done. No one suspected the bubbly little girl who lost two people close to her. Such a tragedy,” her voice mocked. “I was so convincing.”

  “Why?”

  Jade leaned back on her hands and looked up at the stars, looking ethereal in the moonlight. “Why what?”

  “Why kill the real Jade Prescott?” Corvina asked, thankfully her voice more stable.